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Expanding Editorial Coverage - The main focus of this month’s editorial coverage is the Bauma 2010 Preview — the third such undertaking since Mining Media purchased E&MJ in 2003.
Those were the days when a new publisher and a group of mining writers were explaining to mining companies and equipment and service providers their plan to restore E&MJ. Similar to the mining and mineral processing business, it had been ravaged throughout the last half of the 1990s. They listened; they believed.
In 2005, Mining Media made a bold move and acquired its closest competitor, World Mining Equipment. That acquisition added readers, a mining conference (Haulage & Loading) and more mining-related intellect, namely Kyran Casteel, to the E&MJ venue. Over a relatively short period of time, E&MJ readers quickly became acquainted with Kyran......... read
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BHP Billiton Plans Further Iron Ore Growth in Western Australia
-On January 29, BHP Billiton announced corporate approval for $1.93 billion in early expenditures on Rapid Growth Project 6 (RGP6) for continuing growth at its Western Australian iron ore operations. BHP Billiton’s share of the total will be $1.73 billion. The funding will allow early procurement of long-lead-time items and detailed engineering to continue the expansion of the inner harbor at Port Hedland, progress rail track duplication works, and expand the Jimblebar.........
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China Indicts Four Rio Tinto Employees - Rio Tinto reported on February 11 that it had been advised the People’s Procuratorate in China had transferred the case relating to the company’s four Shanghai employees, detained since July 5, 2009, to the Shanghai Number One Intermediate Court for trial. A trial date had not been set. The charges related to receiving bribes and stealing commercial secrets. Those indicted include Stern Hu, an Australian citizen who headed Rio Tinto’s Shanghai office and who is originally from China, and Chinese citizens Liu Caikui, Ge Minqiang and Wang Yong....... read
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Barrick to Spin Off Gold Assets, Increase Cerro Casale Interest
- Barrick Gold’s year-end 2009 report included an announcement of plans to spin off its African assets into a new company, African Barrick Gold (ABG), which will seek listing on the London Stock Exchange. ABG will hold Barrick’s four African gold mines— North Mara, Bulyanhulu, Tulawaka (70% owned by Barrick), and Buzwagi, all located in Tanzania—and its African exploration properties. ABG will offer approximately 25% of its equity to the public..... read
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South Africa Drops to Third in World Gold Production - Global gold mine production grew by 6% in 2009 to a six-year high, but South Africa— once the largest producer in the world— saw its production levels fall by 5% and consequently to third place behind China and Australia in the league table of gold producing countries, according to figures released by precious metals consultancy, GFMS, which analyses production levels in all producer countries.... read
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Lihir Gold Sets Sights on 1.5M Oz/Year Production Target
- Lihir Gold Ltd (LGL), has released production targets for its mines for the next decade, revealing plans for significant increases in gold output. The company is aiming to produce 1.45 million oz/y on average for the five years from 2012 to 2016, rising to an average of approximately 1.5 million oz/y for the following five years to 2021. This represents an increase of about 50% from 2010 production of 960,000–1.06 million oz. Chief Executive Phil Baker explained LGL’s medium- to long-term production targets for its existing mines at the BMO Capital Markets 2010 Global Metals & Mining Conference in Florida...... read
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Alamos Finalizes Acquisition of Turkish Gold Assets
- Alamos Gold Inc. reported that it has closed the acquisition of 100% of the Agi Dagi and Kirazli gold projects through the purchase of certain Turkish subsidiaries held by Fronteer Development Group. Agi Dagi and Kirazli are advanced-stage gold exploration projects located in the Biga Peninsula of northwestern Turkey...... read
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Eagle Mine and Mill Receive Michigan State Approvals
- Kennecott Eagle Minerals, a whollyowned subsidiary of Rio Tinto, reported in separate announcements in January and February 2010 it has received Michigan state approvals to begin construction of its underground Eagle nickel-copper mine and to refurbish and operate the nearby Humboldt mill to process Eagle ore at operations located about 25 km west of the city of Marquette on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.....read
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BHP Billiton Advances Potash Development
- In January 2010, BHP Billiton announced corporate approval for $240 million in early-stage capital expenditures at its Jansen potash project in Saskatchewan and, in a separate announcement, that it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Athabasca Potash Inc. for about $320 million. Athabasca Potash’s Burr project is located adjacent to the Jansen project. The Jansen project is in the final stages of a pre-feasibility study, and BHP Billiton expects to move into the feasibility phase in mid-2010, with a full....read more

Vale Acquires Phosphate Assets in Brazil - Vale and Bunge Ltd. announced on January 27, 2010, that Vale will acquire Bunge’s fertilizer nutrients assets in Brazil, including its phosphate mines and fertilizer production facilities and its 42.3% interest in Fertilizantes Fosfatados S.A. (Fosfertil), for $3.8 billion in cash. Of the total transaction value, $1.65 billion is attributed to Bunge’s phosphate rock and fertilizer production assets. The remaining $2.15 billion is for Bunge’s Fosfertil shares. The transaction is subject……read
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Exeter Spinning Off Argentine Assets - Canadian junior Exeter Resource Corp. announced a proposal in mid-January 2010 to spin off its Argentine assets into a new company, Extorre Gold Mines Ltd., while retaining its huge Caspiche porphyry gold-copper project in the Maricunga region of Chile as its core asset. Under the terms of the transaction Exeter will retain all assets relating to the Caspiche discovery, together with approximately $50 million in working capital. Exeter will transfer to Extorre the high-grade Cerro Moro goldsilver….read more

Boddington on Schedule to Become a 1 million oz/yr Gold Producer - The recommissioned Boddington gold mine was officially opened on February 3, by Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett and President of Newmont Mining Corp. Richard O’Brien. Boddington is a large, open-pit mine about 130 km southeast of Perth. It is located within the Saddleback Greenstone Belt, a fault bonded sliver of achaean volcanic and shallow level intrusive rocks, surrounded by granitic….read
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Rio Tinto Ships First Mesa A/Warramboo Ore - Rio Tinto dispatched the first train load of iron ore from the Robe River Joint Venture’s new Mesa A/Warramboo mine in the Robe Valley of the Pilbara region of Western Australia on February 19. The joint venture is owned 53% by Rio Tinto, 33% by Mitsui, 10.5% by Nippon Steel, and 3.5% by Sumitomo Metal Industries. The open-cut mine, located about 50 km west of Pannawonica, has an initial production capacity of 20 million mt/y, increasing to 25 million mt/y by 2011. Capital investment to develop the mine totaled $901 million….read
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Kinross Agrees to Acquire High-Grade Deposit Near Kupol - Kinross Gold has agreed in principle to acquire the high-grade Dvoinoye deposit and the Vodorazdelnaya exploration property, both located about 90 km north of Kinross’ 75%-owned Kupol operation in the Chukotka region of the Russian Far East. The Dvoinoye deposit currently hosts a small open-pit mine that has been operated six months per year at a throughput of about 250 mt/d. Kinross plans to develop the operation as a larger underground mine and to transport the ore to the Kupol mill for processing….read
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Rio Tinto Ups Ownership in Ivanhoe Mines to 22.4% -Ivanhoe Mines announced on March 1 that the company has entered into an agreement to issue 15 million common shares to Rio Tinto at C$16.31 per share, for net proceeds of C$244.7 million (US$232.4 million). Ivanhoe said it will use the proceeds to purchase from Rio Tinto key mining and milling equipment to be installed during the construction of the Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold mining complex in Mongolia .….read
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Mineral Deposits Doubling Mill Throughput at Sabodala - Mineral Deposits Ltd. announced in late January 2010 plans to double milling capacity at its Sabodala gold operations in south-eastern Senegal to approximately 4 million mt/y, increasing gold production to 200,000 oz/y. Detailed engineering, delivery of long-lead-time equipment items, and construction are expected to take about 15 months. Pit life based on existing reserves will be reduced from 11 to seven years. The expansion will be undertaken in two phases, with the first phase scheduled to lift production to 3.5 million mt/y by mid-2011 ….read more

AngloGold Suspends Operations at Iduapriem
- AngloGold Ashanti temporarily suspended operations at its Iduapriem mine in Ghana in February 2010 following discussions with the Environmental Protection Agency of Ghana (EPA) regarding potentially adverse environmental impacts arising from the mine’s current tailings storage facility. Operations were to remain suspended until alternative arrangements for tailings storage can be established. An interim location for tailings storage has been identified, and AngloGold Ashanti was working with the EPA to……
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Talvivaara Planning Uranium Recovery - Talvivaara Mining Co., which recovers nickel, zinc and copper from bio heap leach process solutions at its operations in eastern Finland, has announced plans to recover small amounts of uranium that also leach out of its ores. Uranium grade in the Talvivaara ore averages 15 to 20 ppm, and uranium concentration in the heap leach solutions is low, at about 25 mg/l. However, Talvivaara reports that it has developed a solvent extraction process that can economically extract about 350 mt/y of U3O8 from these solutions ….read more

Wilpinjong Mine Ships First Coal to Newcastle Terminal
- Peabody Energy’s Wilpinjong mine, located in New South Wales, shipped the first coal to the newly constructed 30 million metric ton per year (mt/y) NCIG export terminal in Newcastle, Australia. The terminal is set to begin exports in April. Peabody is investing in a major capital program to expand its Australia metallurgical and thermal platform …. read
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Australian Coal Magnate Lands Chinese Deal
- Resourcehouse Ltd., an iron ore and coal mining company owned by Clive Palmer, recently secured one of Australia's largest export contracts, worth an estimated US$60 billion. The company said it had reached a 20-year sales agreement with China Power International Holding Ltd. The contract involves the Resourcehouse proposed China First coal mine and infrastructure project in central Queensland.…...read more

Mechel Announces Progress at Elga
- Mechel OAO in making progress on developing the Elga coking coal deposit. At the beginning of February, two heavy machinery convoys had already reached the Upper Ulak railway construction site (Amur Region). The equipment will be used to develop the Elga coking coal deposit. There will be five equipment and machinery convoys in total. They are expected to deliver all necessary equipment and materials to start.…...read more

China Becomes Net Importer, Mine Fatalities Drop
- According to China’s National Energy Administration (NEA), in 2009, China imported 126 million metric tons (mt) of coal and exported 22.4 million mt, which creates a net import of 103 million mt coal for the first time. The NEA said low coal prices made imports more affordable for power plants serving China’s south coastal cities. Moreover China’s economy recovers and so does coal demand. Meanwhile, China’s State.…...read more

For a machine that, not too long ago, featured cable-operated blade controls, an open-air operator’s station sprouting thickets of levers and clutch pedals, and not much else but brute power and noise, the crawler bulldozer has come a long way from its 1920s origins as a modified farm tractor. In particular, the last four decades have seen a steady escalation in miningclass dozer power and technology, starting with the introduction of 500-plus-horsepower crawlers from Allis Chalmers in the late 1960s, followed by Komatsu’s 620-hp D455A in the mid-1970s……. read more

FEATURE

Underground Loading

Atlas Copco Unveils the Scooptram ST7This 6.8-mt-capacity LHD is designed for mines in which small machine size combined with high performance are the keys to superior productivity

By Kyran Casteel, European Editor

With the new standard Scooptram ST7 now joining the low-profile Scooptram ST7LP version, Atlas Copco’s small load-hauldump vehicles will be demonstrated in key markets in the coming months. In Örebro, Sweden, at the time of writing, Atlas Copco is putting the finishing touches to the first series production standard Scooptram ST7 following extensive field trials of a prototype. This latest addition to the Scooptram range complements the ST7LP low-profile version of the 6.8- mt-capacity loader discussed in the March 2009 issue of E&MJ. The company can now offer both conventional small—typically narrow vein—mines and low-headroom operations a highly competitive loader featuring significant advantages over its predecessors and over competitor LHDs......read more

Moving Ahead in a Material WorldFresh concepts and integrated solutions from materials handling suppliers help mines stay on track to profitability

By Russell A. Carter, Managing Editor

Mining and materials handling go hand-inhand. Without the fundamental capability to reliably and efficiently transfer high volumes of various materials, even the most carefully crafted mine plan quickly fails. Because of this, the stakes have always been high for both the materials-handling equipment supplier and the client going into any large mining venture, and they’re getting even higher. Now, it’s generally no longer acceptable for a critical system to just passably move material from one location to another—system productivity often must be guaranteed, energy consumption is a growing concern, and green initiatives …...read
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FEATURE

Bauma 2010

Mining Grows in Importance for Bauma 2010

With traditional construction markets slumping, mining and mineral processing will be one of the bright spots for the largest equipment exposition

By Steve Fiscor, Editor-in-Chief

Every three years Messe München International hosts bauma, one of the world’s largest construction and mining expositions. The 29th bauma will take place April 19-25, 2010, in Munich. "Today bauma is the undisputed number one trade fair for the construction machinery industry worldwide," said Klaus Dittrich, CEO, Messe München GmbH. "Not only that, it is the biggest of all the specialist trade fairs—for any industry—that take place for around the globe. So bauma is big. Yet somehow this event manages to break new records every time it is held. The next bauma is no exception." bauma 2010 is fully booked.....read more

GeoVisionary Flies Underground, Virtually - Combining a powerful data engine with a virtual geological toolkit, GeoVisionary software is allowing stereoscopic 3-D visualization of terabytes of landscape photography and altitude data together with underlying geological data, making it of great interest to mining and exploration geologists. Developed jointly by Virtalis, a U.K.- based virtual reality and advanced visualization company, and the British Geological Survey (BGS), the software enables the visualization of underlying geological modeling in 3-D and allows other related geoscience ….read
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Tyco Unit Focuses on Mining Customers’ Valve Requirements - With more than 90 different brands in its product lineup, Tyco Flow Control (TFC), a business segment of $17-billion (2009 revenue) industrial conglomerate Tyco International, considers itself the world’s largest supplier of products that move, control and sample a wide variety of flowable industrial materials ranging from heavy slurries to gases. Its portfolio of interest to mining includes several equipment brands widely used throughout the industry…… read
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New Core-Drilling Products - Fordia recently introduced several new core-drilling products, including the OWL self-locking core barrel head assembly featuring a patented latch design comprising two self-locking and independent latches. According to the company, once the latches are deployed, they are locked in position by a piston and cannot be retracted, eliminating mislatching events. Key features of the unit include a design that allows minimal contact area between latches and rods, latch mechanisms fabricated from high strength alloy steel….read more

Laser Scanner for Long-Range Surveying
- Maptek has announced the release of a new laser scanner, the I-Site 8800, claiming it delivers the most advanced laser scanner technology combining outstanding measurement accuracy with ease of use. It is intended for a spectrum of applications, from close-range detailed survey to longrange topographic mapping, and designed to match a surveyor’s workflow. Main features include an automatic tilt compensator, motorized alignment telescope, longlife .……
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Catalog Lists Automation Resources - A new digital Mining, Minerals and Cement (MMC) Consultant Resource Catalog (CRC) can reduce engineering time and costs to produce professional project procurement specifications, according to its publisher Rockwell Automation. The MMC CRC is a comprehensive collection of MMC-related product and solution literature, specifications and engineering software provided on a USB card, with more than 80 automation and control specification….read
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High Power, Low Vibration
- Hilti says its most powerful breaker ever— the new TE 1500-AVR—combines tremendous impact energy with the lowest vibration in its class. With 22 ft-lb of impact energy generated by a 1,800-watt motor, the TE 1500-AVR delivers up to 1,950 blows per minute. Hilti says the TE 1500-AVR also offers an excellent weight-to-power ratio….read
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Crusher Improvements Bring Higher Capacity, Easier Maintenance - Metso’s Nordberg MP1250 cone crusher is claimed to provide up to 25% more capacity with an increase in power to 1,250 hp, while maintaining the same physical footprint as the company's MP1000 model. According to Metso, the MP1250 offers nearly a dozen key features and benefits that include: a more robust bearing design that allows a wider range of application and maximizes bearing life; a redesigned mainframe for improved durability; a new eccentric design provides improved.….read more

Vibration Monitoring for Longwall Systems - Bucyrus announced that its PMC-D/V AFC and plow drive control system has been upgraded to provide vibration monitoring (VM) to protect underground mining equipment. Called VibraGuard, this system allows trained personnel to predict machine component wear, avoid unplanned downtime, and set alarms to warn the operator if monitored machine components run the risk of damage. According to Bucyrus, customers are demanding online.….read
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Filtration System Handles Hot Gases, Fine Particulates - Tri-Mer Corp., a developer of advanced technologies for the control of VOCs, fine particulate and industrial gases, has introduced UltraTemp Filtration, a hot gas filtration system that filters fine particulate to extremely low levels. The heart of the system is a new generation of ceramic filters. Filters used in the UltraTemp Filtration system are manufactured from low-density ceramic fibers that provide exceptionally high resistance to thermal shock….read
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APRIL 25–30, 2010: International Coal Preparation Congress, Lexington, Kentucky, USA.Contact: The Coal Preparation Society of America www.coalprepsociety.org or the International Organizing Committee of the ICPC www.icpc2010.com

Inmarsat - BGAN for Mining
BGAN provides instant, remote voice and high-speed data connectivity for all stages of the mining cycle, from mineral exploration through to mine closure. Exploration teams can send test data, still images and video to geophysicists back in the lab for immediate analysis and results, wherever they're working or for how long - increasing the success rate of exploration and enabling you to act faster to exploit new deposits...watch the video

Atlas Copco - Elemex DTH-Drilling in Sensitive Areas
With the new Elemex™ overburden drilling and casing advancing system, Atlas Copco gives you all the benefits of DTH drilling such as high productivity, straight and deep holes, without risking air leakage or overdrilling to cause damage to surrounding structures. Thanks to the Elemex design, the flow and direction of the compressed air is under control. This means that you can take on the most sensitive and challenging projects in foundation construction...watch the video

Flygt - New Standard in Dewatering
The new standard in dewatering pump technology is here: the 2600 series from Flygt. Designed to meet the increasingly stringent performance and economy demands of today’s industry, these pumps deliver unmatched wear resistance and consistent performance over time. Backed by Flygt’s outstanding support and worldwide presence, the 2600 series keeps your operations moving...watch the video

Hägglunds - Meeting Demands Since 1960
No one is more qualified to meet your drive system needs than Hägglunds.
Since introducing our first hydraulic radial piston motor almost half a century ago, we’ve been helping customers worldwide manage the toughest tasks in the roughest industrial environments.
More than a traditional gear and transmission design, Hägglunds drive solutions bring even greater advantage with the best assurance of performance, flexibility and reliability...watch the video